Dr. Elves' reputation savaged by the Sun

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 4/12/2014 (1446 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I was saddened to read the headline in the Friday, Nov. 28, Brandon Sun “Local Doc Censured After Baby Death.” It was sad, of course, because the Sun felt this was sufficiently newsworthy to be the lead story in the paper.

The story results in further pain for the families involved and also further pain for Dr. Elves, who is being re-censured in a more public forum. By doing the story in this way, the reputation of a hard-working, skilled and compassionate physician is being savaged by your paper.

As a profession, doctors are held to a very high standard by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba. So they should be. None of us is perfect. Occasionally, in spite of our best intentions, things go wrong and, on review, our decisions may be found wanting. The purpose of the college procedure is to bring this to light and, through this process, try to assure that it doesn’t happen again. The results of the censure are made public by law.

It seems to me, however, that the purpose of the Sun in reporting the story the way it was (including anonymous accusations by another person in an unrelated matter) was something else altogether. This smacks of tabloid journalism (at best).

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Hey there, time traveller!This article was published 4/12/2014 (1446 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I was saddened to read the headline in the Friday, Nov. 28, Brandon Sun “Local Doc Censured After Baby Death.” It was sad, of course, because the Sun felt this was sufficiently newsworthy to be the lead story in the paper.

The story results in further pain for the families involved and also further pain for Dr. Elves, who is being re-censured in a more public forum. By doing the story in this way, the reputation of a hard-working, skilled and compassionate physician is being savaged by your paper.

As a profession, doctors are held to a very high standard by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba. So they should be. None of us is perfect. Occasionally, in spite of our best intentions, things go wrong and, on review, our decisions may be found wanting. The purpose of the college procedure is to bring this to light and, through this process, try to assure that it doesn’t happen again. The results of the censure are made public by law.

It seems to me, however, that the purpose of the Sun in reporting the story the way it was (including anonymous accusations by another person in an unrelated matter) was something else altogether. This smacks of tabloid journalism (at best).

The bar for physician standards and performance is set very high. Apparently, the bar set by the Brandon Sun for journalism standards is considerably lower.

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